Often they do go back and forth the whole way, and I don't know until the very end what the last line of the book is going to be. That was true here - the very last line of the book was the last thing that happened.

I started thinking about [ what book is going to go next] when I was working on As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth.

By the time I finished the book [All Alone in the Universe], Robin Roy was saying, "More pictures!"

I don't want to make myself sound that spontaneous, because I'm not.

I remember when I was working on All Alone in the Universe, and Robin Roy was my editor. When I first sent it to her, she said kids this age don't want pictures in their books.

Ideas mostly come from the work itself. Often when I'm drawing, the words will be bouncing around in my head, and when I'm writing, ideas about the drawing happen.

In the bedroom time I have generated thoughts, and then in the studio I take those thoughts and try to shape them into something.